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      Man Charged With Tupac Shakur’s Murder Loses Bid for Release

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      A judge declined to release Duane Keith Davis, whose trial is scheduled for March, after a dispute over the source of the bail funds.A judge in Nevada declined on Tuesday to release a man who was charged with the murder of the rapper Tupac Shakur after expressing concern that the money provided to bail him out from jail could be connected to a possible deal to tell his story in a TV series.The man, Duane Keith Davis, known as Keffe D, has said for years that he was a critical player in the gang-orchestrated shooting of the rapper, drawing scrutiny from prosecutors nearly three decades after the killing. A grand jury indicted Mr. Davis on one count of murder with use of a deadly weapon last year.Mr. Davis has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer has said that those admissions of responsibility — which he made in a memoir and in videotaped interviews — were “for entertainment purposes” under the belief that he had been granted immunity from prosecution.Judge Carli Kierny of the Eighth Judicial District Court in Nevada declined to release Mr. Davis after a dispute over the source of the funds that would have been used for bail.Prosecutors had opposed his release, pointing to an interview on YouTube in which the man who posted the bail bond premium of about $112,000 said he would help out only if Mr. Davis agreed to do a TV series with him.“This is him getting paid from his retelling of his criminal past,” Binu Palal, one of the prosecutors overseeing the case, said at a court hearing in June.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      9 Surprising Songs Sampled in Classic Hip-Hop Tracks

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      Hear where moments of Kraftwerk, Enya, Herb Alpert and more ended up in producers’ deft hands.Kraftwerk.Cyril Zingaro/Keystone, via Associated PressDear listeners,Today’s playlist is a celebration of a tried-and-true method of discovering new-to-you music: identifying the samples in hip-hop songs.In his recently released book “Hip-Hop Is History,” Questlove recalls a story from his childhood that speaks to this experience. When he couldn’t fall asleep, he’d listen to the radio in the middle of the night, when D.J.s were free to play the most outré sounds. “During those years,” he writes, “I heard a song that was bizarre synth music, completely compelling, pure hypnosis on the airwaves.” He tried to tape it but could never correctly anticipate when it would come on. Several years passed and he still hadn’t figured out what that elusive song was, but then one day he heard it — or something like it — at a roller rink birthday party. When he asked about it, the D.J. was so taken with his curiosity, he gifted him the 12-inch single. “It was ‘Planet Rock,’” he writes, referencing the legendary track by Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force. “It sampled the Kraftwerk song I had heard, which I learned was called ‘Trans-Europe Express.’ That party and that 12-inch made my day, my year and part of my life.”These days it’s much easier to track down the source of a sample, thanks to Google searches, apps like Shazam and websites like the invaluable database WhoSampled.com. But samples are still powerful portals between genres, cultures and music’s past and present. Sampling is the reason Dr. Dre is one degree of separation from the Scottish composer David McCallum, and why we know that Enya is a fan of the Fugees — and vice versa.There are so many great and unexpected samples in classic hip-hop songs that today’s playlist should be considered only a brief introduction. (Perhaps a sequel will arrive in a future Amplifier, too.) If you’re a true hip-hop head, listen to the playlist before reading the descriptions below and see how many tracks you can name from hearing the source material of their samples. And if you’re more familiar with the originals than the songs that sampled them, make sure you also check out the hip-hop classics linked in the descriptions below.We so tight that you get our styles tangled,LindsayListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean Combs Fights Lawsuit by Music Producer Alleging Sexual Misconduct

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      The hip-hop mogul’s lawyers are seeking the dismissal of a suit from Rodney Jones Jr., arguing it is baseless and “replete with far-fetched tales of misconduct.”Lawyers for Sean Combs filed court papers on Monday seeking the dismissal of a civil suit by a music producer who accused Mr. Combs of making unwanted sexual contact, arguing that the lawsuit was baseless and “replete with far-fetched tales of misconduct.”The filing, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, is the latest effort by the hip-hop impresario’s legal team to dismiss a series of recent lawsuits that accuse him of sexual assault and misconduct. The suit by Rodney Jones Jr., a music producer who worked on Mr. Combs’s most recent album, accuses Mr. Combs of groping him and forcing him to solicit prostitutes; he also alleges that Mr. Combs threatened him with violence.In their response, lawyers for Mr. Combs wrote that Mr. Jones’s claims lack basic details, including where and when the alleged groping occurred, along with how, exactly, Mr. Combs pressured him into hiring prostitutes.“Such vague allegations fall well short of federal pleading standards,” wrote one of the lawyers, Erica A. Wolff, who argued that the real purpose of the lawsuit is to “generate media hype and exploit it to extract a settlement.”One threat of violence that the lawsuit alleges was that Mr. Combs once threatened to “eat Mr. Jones’s face,” but the exact context for the comment was unclear in Mr. Jones’s suit, a 98-page document that details a litany of allegations from his time as a part of Mr. Combs’s entourage.Mr. Jones’s lawyer, Tyrone A. Blackburn, called the filing a “desperate Hail Mary attempt.”“Nothing in this complaint is far-fetched,” he said. “Nothing in this complaint is too vague.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      8 Correct Answers to ‘What Was the Song of the Summer?’

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      Revisit contenders from Sabrina Carpenter, Kendrick Lamar and Billie Eilish.Sabrina Carpenter has the top contender for song of the summer.Amy Harris/Invision, via Associated PressDear listeners,I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but the end of the summer is approaching. Every year around this time, music fans’ favorite unwinnable debate reaches an apex: What was the song of the summer?At the risk of breaking even more bad news, I’ll say that for the most part, the Song of the Summer is a fictitious and even pointless construction, generally immeasurable and usually difficult to agree on unanimously. Sure, every so often a single tune becomes so ubiquitous during those sweltering, school’s out months that it rightfully earns the title. Think of Lil Nas X’s chart-dominant “Old Town Road” in 2019; the viral glee of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” in 2012; or, if you can remember that far back, the Bayside Boys remix of Los Del Rio’s “Macarena” in 1996 (Ay!).But more often than not, the Song of the Summer is up for debate. And given that I believe a true S.o.t.S. must be monocultural and undeniable, most contenders do not truly reach that status.Around Memorial Day, it did seem like we had a prime candidate: the rising pop star Sabrina Carpenter’s fun, flirty “Espresso.” It had all the makings of a summer smash, including a well-timed release date, a beach-themed music video and several goofy, endlessly quotable lyrics that just begged to be printed on novelty boardwalk T-shirts. Case closed, right?But as the summer continued, “Espresso” faced some formidable challengers. The Drake-vs.-Kendrick Lamar beef produced a bona fide anthem in “Not Like Us,” by most measures the biggest hit of Lamar’s career. The rise of the Midwest princess Chappell Roan became one of the year’s most captivating narratives, and her wrenching synth-pop single “Good Luck, Babe!” climbed the Hot 100 accordingly. Even Carpenter herself gave “Espresso” a run for its money with its irresistible follow-up single, “Please Please Please,” which achieved a feat that her previous hit did not: It went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.So, which was the Song of the Summer? Today’s playlist contains 8 different and entirely acceptable answers to the question. If I had to pick just one, I’d still go with “Espresso,” but I’d argue this summer contained too many unexpected plot twists for there to be a unanimous winner. Maybe it’s just one of those years where you need a collection of different tunes to tell the full story of the season. So let this playlist be a time capsule that you can return to in subsequent years when you want to conjure up the sound of summer ’24 — or in a couple of months, when the autumn chill makes you long for these endless sunny days.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cash Cobain Is Changing the Sound of Drill

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      Drill music hasn’t always been this fun. The subgenre’s ominous beats and menacing lyrics infiltrated mainstream hip-hop over a decade ago, but its ascendant stars have been stalled by violence, police surveillance and the flattening effect of at-home copycats. Cash Cobain, the 26-year-old breakout rapper and producer from the Bronx, is helping to raise its trajectory. With lusty rhymes and unorthodox samples, he’s become a central figure of “sexy drill,” a more lascivious offshoot, and one that has tilted the sound of rap nationally.En route to a Coney Island performance in early August, sitting in the passenger seat of a new Mercedes sedan, Cobain rapped along to “Rump Punch,” a song from his upcoming album, as it oozed through the speakers. In between doo-wop-esque lines of flattery for a paramour (“When it comes to pretty, you the pinnacle”), the track sandwiches a hilariously profane offer of oral sex between dreamy keys and a simple repeated drumstick clack.When people hear his music, he explained, “everyone should feel that, feel like they can’t control their body. Their body just gotta dance because the music is so sexy.”It’s a sound that has caught the ears of the melodically inclined hornballs that constitute rap’s upper reaches, perhaps best defined by the 2022 moment when Frank Ocean debuted a gold and diamond-studded sex toy for his jewelry line and used a Cobain track to soundtrack the introductory Instagram post. But the lusty stamp that counts most came when Lil Yachty passed along several Cobain beats to Drake, who barely tweaked one for “Calling for You,” a single that reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. In the past year, Cobain has rapped on tracks he produced for PinkPantheress and Central Cee, Don Toliver and J. Cole.The 26-year-old Cash Cobain has released six projects since 2021, including his breakthrough mixtape, “2 Slizzy 2 Sexy.”Andre D. Wagner for The New York TimesBy the time Cobain was set for a New York City victory lap, a show in April called Slizzy Fest, demand was such that police preemptively shut it down for overcrowding. (Fans got wind that Drake might attend.) Cobain led fans to Union Square and held an open-air show, rapping along to music boosted by a Bluetooth speaker. Born Cashmere Small (yes, his stage name nods to the late Nirvana frontman), Cobain is now on a national tour supporting Ice Spice, the reigning queen of “pop drill” and his collaborator on the remix of “Fisherrr,” a single that has steadily crept East to West across airwaves since its release in February. The song and the tour are a conjoining of drill’s sonic offspring, each taking the sound past its hyperlocal roots. His new album, “Play Cash Cobain,” is set to arrive Friday with cover art by Drake, and it both trades in Cobain’s usual tropes and offers a bunch of groovable swerves.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Interview’: Jelly Roll Cannot Believe How His Life Turned Out

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      We’ve all had the experience of being in a bad emotional place and, in response, putting on a song. We know that song isn’t going to fix the problem, whatever it may be, or even change the feeling. But the music we turn to when we’re struggling can be like a hand on our shoulder. For a legion of Americans today, the music that does that is by Jelly Roll.Listen to the Conversation With Jelly RollFrom jail and addiction to music stardom — the singer tells David Marchese he’s living a “modern American fairy tale.”Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppJelly’s real name is Jason DeFord, and he’s from Antioch, Tenn. He’s 39-years-old, burly (though he’s trying to lose weight), with a face covered in tattoos. In a sign of the breadth of his audience, he has been able to score on the country, rock and pop charts with hit singles like “Need a Favor” and albums like 2023’s “Whitsitt Chapel.” His southern-rock and hip-hop-inflected country songs are almost all about clawing toward some semblance of stability, which is an experience that informs a lot of his music, because it’s one he knows well. Jelly was in and out of prison starting as a teenager and into his mid-20s. He has dealt with personal loss and substance-abuse issues — both his own and that of his teenage daughter’s mother. He has also dealt with the professional despair of a long run to nowhere as an aspiring rapper. But that’s before he switched to singing and, beginning in 2021, started to hit it big.The musician — one half of a down-home power couple with his wife, Bunnie Xo, who hosts the popular Dumb Blonde podcast — will set off on a cross-country headlining arena tour later this month. He also has a new, highly-anticipated album, “Beautifully Broken,” scheduled for release this fall. He is, by any measure, a star — and still figuring out just what that means.Can you share some of the things that fans come up and tell you? I’ve heard it all, Bubba. I’ve heard everything from “Your music was played at my daughter’s funeral; she had an accidental overdose” to “Your song helped me get through rehab; I listened to ‘Save Me’ on repeat for 30 days straight.” Or “It was our morning song before we did our gratitude list.” Yeah, everything from funerals to hospitals to recovery centers. I’ve heard the good stories, too: “I got sober.” It’s crazy, the range of emotions.Is it ever hard for you to be the recipient of that? Nah, I feel honored that I have a purpose. I spent so much of my life being counterproductive to society that to be in a place where I’m able to help people has completely changed my mentality. More

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      Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’s Throwback Duet, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by the Linda Lindas featuring Weird Al Yankovic, Chlöe and Anderson .Paak, Lou Reed’s early band and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars, ‘Die With a Smile’Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars — two superstars who have been relatively quiet on the music front in recent years — team up for the first time on “Die With a Smile,” a romantic, lightly apocalyptic slow-dance that offers both the opportunity to belt to the rafters. Despite the music video’s George & Tammy cosplay, there’s not much of that ever-so-trendy twang to be heard on the actual track. Instead, “Die With a Smile” is a lush, soft-rock torch song accentuated by weightless, trebly guitar. “If the world was ending, I’d wanna be next to you,” they sing together on an anthemic chorus, striking the right balance between grit and polish — just two consummate professionals doing their thing. LINDSAY ZOLADZPost Malone featuring Chris Stapleton, ‘California Sober’Post Malone and Chris Stapleton sound like they’re having a blast on the rollicking “California Sober,” one of many country duets featured on Posty’s new album “F-1 Trillion.” The twangy foot-stomper spins a classic country yarn: picking up a good-looking hitchhiker who drinks all your whiskey, picks your pockets and leaves you with a lingering kiss goodbye. “Damn bottle was dry,” Post Malone croons in a voice that blends well with Stapleton’s gravely drawl. “Kinda wanted to cry.” ZOLADZThe Primitives, ‘The Ostrich’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      7 Hot Tracks From a New Generation of Female Rappers

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      Listen to recent songs from Megan Thee Stallion, Ice Spice, Latto and more.Megan Thee StallionCharles Sykes/Invision, via Associated PressDear listeners,In April 2018, the same week that the Bronx superstar Cardi B released her debut album, “Invasion of Privacy,” Complex magazine published an essay by the writer Kiana Fitzgerald that explored a longstanding question: “Why can there only be one dominant woman in rap?”The answer, naturally, was sexism. It was the same old story: The rivalry between Cardi and Nicki Minaj just felt like a new generation’s Foxy Brown vs. Lil’ Kim. Male rappers, Fitzgerald argued, “have free rein in the genre and — consciously or subconsciously — want to keep it that way.” She added, “when women are pitted against each other, they’re occupied and out of the way, ensuring they take up as little space as possible.”It’s remarkable how much has changed since then. In the six years since that essay was published, an entire vanguard of female rappers has come to the fore, proving that more is more. Megan Thee Stallion and Ice Spice have become household names — and done so with markedly different styles that rep their respective hometowns of Houston and New York City. The St. Louis rapper Sexyy Red has transcended her initial co-sign from Drake to become a solo star on her own. Latto, from Atlanta, has commanded airplay with catchy hooks and lively bars; the Memphis-born GloRilla has found success with a harder-edged approach, leaning into the gravelly grit of her signature drawl.Today’s playlist celebrates the many female voices in the current rap game. And I do mean current: It’s composed entirely of songs released in the past few months, a testament to the fact that one of the most notable trends in music right now is the steady plurality of female rappers on the charts.It’s 7 p.m. Friday, it’s 95 degrees,LindsayListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More